On 21 April 2016, the final conference of the EU-FP7 funded project “POLIMP” took place in Brussels. How can climate policies be designed, what impacts do they have and what other options are there? These are important questions to stakeholders and policy-makers. The project POLIMP aims at making answers to these issues more easily accessible and understandable. To this end, POLIMP examines knowledge gaps for different policy and decision making levels and covers these with the help of existing research results.

The Ecologic Institute, together with a consortium, conducted a study on wildlife crime, which gives an overview over the state of wildlife crime in Europe. As as a basis for this study, in-depth analyses were carried out for five EU member states. Ecologic Institute conducted the in-depth analysis of wildlife crime in Germany. The analysis concludes that Germany is not a main destination for illegal wildlife products from iconic species, but still an important destination for live animals like reptiles for the pet market. It is also an important transit country for ivory and other illegally traded animal parts from Western and Central Africa with East and South-East Asia as the main region of destination. The studies were compiled on behalf of the European Parliament and are available for download.

On 19 April 2016, Stephan Sina and Christiane Gerstetter, Senior Fellows at Ecologic Institute, presented a study on wildlife crime to the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) of the European Parliament in Brussels. The study was compiled by a consortium lead by Ecologic Institute and published recently on the European Parliament's website. The presentation is available for download.

What could be better than linking fun pastimes—like swimming in the Baltic Sea—with curricular activities? As part of the "Year of Science 2016/17 Seas and Oceans" students, Johanna Gronewald, Kira Paprotka and Bleona Veselaj, from the Rheingau-Gymnasium secondary school in Berlin discussed adaptation strategies to deal with climate change ef-fects at the German Baltic Sea with Dr. Grit Martinez from Ecologic Institute.

Increasing material use efficiency is important to mitigate future supply risks and minimize environmental impacts associated with the production of materials. The policy mix presented in this paper aims to contribute to reducing the use of virgin metals in the EU by 80% by 2050 without significantly shifting burdens to other material resources, the environmental or other parts of the world. The article, which was written with the collaboration of Dr. Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers (Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute), is available for download.

The aim of this workshop is to identify and discuss challenges, opportunities, and policy gaps surrounding the development of bioeconomy strategies across Europe. The outcome of this process will be a list of targeted policy recommendations for the (further) development of balanced and informed bioeconomy strategies at the regional, national and European level.

The project, "Policy Mix for an Updated Adaptation Action Plan," aimed at developing science-based recommendations for the update to the Adaptation Action Plan of the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change. The focus was on the compilation and evaluation of potential adaptation measures and political instruments to further their implementation. The final report of this project is available for download.

An increasing number of countries and regions around the world are developing and implementing emissions trading as a way of putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions. This knowledge package gives an overview of such systems, compares design features and giving an outlook on future developments.

Climate change and other pressures are impacting the environment and water resources in the Mediterranean, requiring plans for how to adapt the management of affected river basins and their water resources to changing future conditions. To address this challenge, a series of workshops organized by Ecologic Institute and local case study partners (CREAF, CyI, INRGREF and IzVRS) were held in March and April 2016 across the Mediterranean as part of the EU-funded BeWater project to gain stakeholder input for further developing tailored river basin adaptation plans.

The conference "Cities and Climate Change – the deluge ahead" on the prevention, adaptation and management of heavy rainfalls took place in Münster on 7 April 2016. The conference brought together 180 participants from management, policy, science, consultancy and practice and was organized by the Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Agriculture, Conservation and Consumer Protection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MKULNV) and the Ministry for Economic Affairs, Energy, Building, Housing and Transport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MBWSV). The objective of the conference was to provide a platform for dialogue and exchange between the participants. The knowledge transfer was aimed at increasing the awareness of climate impacts as well as showing the need for prevention.

We are excited to announce the eighth and final webinar in our POLIMP Webinar Series, which will feature a discussion with Prof. Michael Grubb, author of the book Planetary Economics, on the topic "Are EU climate policies up to the challenge of decarbonizing Europe?". The webinar will be moderated by Ecologic Institute’s Benjamin Görlach (Head, Economics and Policy Assessment).

The final synthesis of the 40 month long EFFACE research project is now available. The report is addressed at decision-makers and presents core findings from the EFFACE project in an accessible language. The final synthesis is available for download.

Ecologic Institute provides a legal assessment of whether German law is suitable to achieve the sustainable development goal "land degradation neutral word" (LDN) by 2030, and recommends options for improvement. The project also compiles key insights and lessons learned, in English, as a contribution to the international discussion on implementing LDN. The project results are discussed in an international workshop.

Janssen, Rainer; Zoritza Kiresiewa; Holger Gerdes 2016: Results of the BioSTEP stakeholder consultation. BioSTEP deliverable 4.1.